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EN
Identities and their representation and expression in different social contexts became one of the key problems of social sciences and humanities in the late 20th century. Sociology – which is the approach taken in this paper – doesn’t understand identity as something given or fixed, but rather as a social construction created in the processes of interaction and negotiation. Emphasis is on the temporal mutability and fluidity of the identities, their social origin (membership in different social groups and identification with them), and the premise that an individual in contemporary society uses a variety of different identities in social interactions. First part of the paper presents the archive, which is the source of the data; the second part is a short overview of key theoretical aspects of sociological research on identities; and the final part is dealing with different ways of expressing a collective (Jewish) identity in biographical interviews from the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive, interpreting it in the broad context of sociological reflections on personal and collective identity
EN
The article discusses the reception of Tuwim’s manifesto in Israel, focusing in particular on the 1940s. The author analyses various critical reponses to the poem expressed by Jewish critics in Palestine. Tuwim’s reception in Israel is presented from a new perspective which has not been explore so far.
EN
The article discusses the reception of Tuwim’s manifesto in Israel, focusing in particular on the 1940s. The author analyses various critical reponses to the poem expressed by Jewish critics in Palestine. Tuwim’s reception in Israel is presented from a new perspective which has not been explore so far.
PL
This paper aims to establish a framework of discursive narratives about the idea of the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Most of these narrative strategies concern the implementation of this huge project, arrangement of exhibitions, topics presented and the importance of the museum for the community of Polish Jews and Poles. The qualitative analysis of the narratives is conducted based on the content of periodicals published by the Jewish community in Poland: „Midrasz. Pismo Żydowskie” and „Chidusz. Magazyn Żydowski”. The analysis involves 11 speeches given immediately after the ceremonial opening of the Museum in 2013 and later, primarily at anniversary celebrations.
EN
Jiří Weil (1900–1959), the Czech writer of Jewish origin, is known primarily for his works of fiction dealing with the experience of the Shoah, both in the form of short stories and his celebrated novels Život s hvězdou (Life with a Star, 1949) and Na střeše je Mendelssohn (Mendelssohn is on the Roof, 1960), as well as the text collage Žalozpěv za 77 297 obětí (Lamentation for 77 297 Victims, 1958). However, the fact that Weil presented the theme of Jewishness also from a different perspective is often overlooked — for example in the novel Harfeník (The Harpist, 1958) and in the unpublished texts ‘Perrotina, mašina chlebozlodějská’ (Perrotine, the Bread-Stealing Machine) and ‘Tiskařská romance’ (A Printer’s Romance), in which he linked the theme of Jewishness to that of the beginnings of the labour movement in the Czech lands in the 19th century. Although Weil’s post-war literary output is characterised by his focus on themes of Jewishness and the Shoah, we also find Jewish figures represented in his pre-war novel writing. Last but not least, it is necessary also to recall his texts of a non-fiction character, in which he dealt with Jewish themes in the course of his employment at the State Jewish Museum. The focal point of this contribution therefore resides in the presentation of Weil’s lesser-known texts, dealing with the theme of Jewishness other than through the prism of the Shoah, and in his uncovering of a complex of Jewish identities in his pre-war novel Moskvahranice (Moscow-Border, 1937).
EN
On the basis of three literary texts quoted in the title of the article, the author analyses and interprets the categories of postmemory and inherited trauma. Roman Gren and Piotr Paziński create fictious nostalgic prose, whereas Mikołaj Grynberg uses a feature genre, i.e. recorded conversations with the Auschwitz survivors’ children. The focal idea and a starting point of the discourse is Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory. The authors of the selected texts attempt to face those experiences. Though differently emotionally and artistically loaded, the texts focus on searching for the traces of ancestors and reconstructing family stories, frequently shrouded in a veil of mystery. Recalling childhood memories, the characters reveal family secrets (Jewish ancestry, the Holocaust experience and repercussions) and gradually begin to understand vague and problematic family relations. All three texts aim at reconstructing the identity of the descendants of the salvaged from Extermination, which allows them to recognize themselves in social, psychological and historical dimensions.
EN
The article discusses the reception of Tuwim’s manifesto in Israel, focusing in particular on the 1940s. The author analyses various critical reponses to the poem expressed by Jewish critics in Palestine. Tuwim’s reception in Israel is presented from a new perspective which has not been explore so far.
EN
In the last twenty years, the method of the so-called cultural transfers in the context of Jewish studies shows itself as very helpful, especially in the research of Jewish identity and cultural processes in general. The following article uses this method and the example of the well-known German- -Jewish painter and graphic artist Jakob Steinhardt, and the artists from his environment to examine the relationship between Expressionism and Jewish identity and their origins. The individual connections between the artists are analysed as well as their works and the reflection in the Zionist press.
EN
Antisemitism has unfortunately persisted throughout history, and the COVID-19 pandemic has not been an exception to this troubling trend. The conditions created by the pandemic, such as fear, uncertainty, and anxiety, have fueled the emergence and spread of conspiracy theories targeting various groups, including Jewish communities. The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a plethora of baseless beliefs and conspiracy theories about its causes, which have contributed to the rise of antisemitism during this time. Pandemics, including the COVID-19 pandemic, inherently create anxiety and uncertainty among populations. This change has affected many areas, both political and social. Conspiracy theories that base the cause of the emergence of COVID-19 on Jewish identity are an essential factor for this study. Tendencies toward antisemitism and scapegoating have supported these conspiracy theories. In this study, how antisemitism manifested itself in media and online discourse during COVID-19 and how Jewish identity is affected by the process.
EN
The objective of the paper is to discuss Philip Roth’s approach to the Jewish community in Newark, where he spent his childhood and where he chose to set several of his novels. Roth’s narrations referring to his hometown are written in the first person singular and often take the form of childhood memories. The persistent return to the settings of the Jewish quarter of Newark in the past seems an attempt at understanding the reality of a relatively closed community, yet far from isolation, which provided him with all the elements determining his complex sense of identity. Despite the various grades of fictitiousness of the characters and settings, the narrating protagonist of a number of Roth’s novels is usually a Jewish schoolboy born and brought up in Newark. The paper includes short analyses of “Jewish memories” in three novels by Philip Roth: The Plot Against America, where the narrator is called Philip Roth but the circumstances are elements of pure political/historical fiction, American Pastoral, where the speaker is Nathan Zuckerman, Roth’s frequent alter ego, and Portnoy’s Complaint, narrated by the fictitious Alexander Portnoy. Being both American and Jewish has considerable implications, which include, for example, the characters’ sexuality. The image of the childhood and adolescence of Roth’s protagonists seems not only an obsessive theme to be found in so many of his texts, but also the core of the intellectual construct which may be recognized as his sense of identity.
EN
In the Interstices of Languages and Cultures. Julian Stryjkowski – a Polish Writer of Jewish OriginThe following sketch is a depiction of a prewar stage of life as well as work of Julian Stryjkowski who was a Polish writer of Jewish origin. Identity quandary of the author of Voices in the Dark was presented against the background of changes taking place in the Jewish world at the turn of the twentieth century juxtaposed with the parallel choices of Shmuel Josef Agnon and Isaac Bashevis Singer. The aim of the essay is to present the role of the language of writing in the process of shaping authors' personal identity.W szczelinach języków i kultur. Julian Stryjkowski - polski pisarz żydowskiego pochodzeniaJest to szkic o przedwojennym etapie życia i twórczości Juliana Stryjkowskiego - polskiego pisarza żydowskiego pochodzenia. Tożsamościowe rozterki twórcy Głosów w ciemności ukazane zostały na tle przemian modernizacyjnych postoświeceniowego żydostwa i zestawione z paralelnymi wyborami Szmuela Josefa Agnona i Izaaka Baszewisa Singera. Głównym celem artykułu jest ukazanie roli języka twórczości w kształtowaniu osobowej tożsamości pisarzy.
EN
Tuwim’s approach to the “Jewish question” has already been analyzed by Polish and foreign scholars. The article is intended to consider some “survival strategies” of the Polish poet from a slightly different angle. In Poland, in the period between the wars Jewish writers were persuaded to accept total polonization and a rejection of their ethnic identity; yet, at the same time they often suffered a rejection from the circles of Polish artists. Any attempt of highlighting their Jewish identity or even a slight interest in Jewish culture incited brutal Jew-bashings. Tuwim considered his being a Polish Jew not only as a fact to be proud of, but also as an opportunity for engaging with self-criticism. He painfully felt the Jewish question as “a powerful wedge cleaving [his own] worldview”. However, like many other Polish-Jewish writers he masked its enduring presence in his own psyche, constructing his public persona through a process of self-fashioning. This paper tries to follow the traces of this “wedge” in Tuwim’s works: from poems supposedly having nothing to do with the “Jewish question”, to encrypted allusions to the great Yiddish writers, from his relentless questioning of all forms of intolerance and nationalist rhetoric, to his conviction that a new poetic language could “reform the world” and become a homeland for all readers regardless of their nationality.
EN
The paper analyzes the images of the Jewish pohrom in the short stories written by a Polish writer Maria Konopnicka “Mendel Gdański” (1890) and by the Ukrainian writer Leonid Pakharevsky “The Father” (1906). The research is made within a framework of comparative analysis. Both authors depict pohroms with an image of an old Jewish man caring for his children or grandchildren. In the wake of anti-Jewish riots the protagonists are undergoing deep personal changes. Mendel loses his love for his city, while Leisor loses his passionary illusions and became involved in an armed struggle for freedom. Konopnicka focuses on the natural belonging of the Jewish population to Polish society and more broadly to the Eastern European multicultural space. Pakharevsky outlines the generation gap. While the older Jews accepts death without resistance, guided by faith in the promised biblical land, the younger Jews denies these illusions and defends their life resolutely. In addition, Konopnicka and Pakharevsky are looking for preconditions for the pohrom. According to them, the only reasons are social prejudices, stereotypes, as well as a criminal factor, to wit the role of criminals and lumpen in anti-Semitic actions. Both short stories use the technique of instilling a sense of danger, although Pakharevsky’s story begins with a scene of fire and a direct attack. Eventually, the pohroms indeed lead to a real escalation of hostility and a painful rift between the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds. In closing, these stories are not only about the genesis and the course of anti-Semitic pohroms, but also universal categories. Importantly, the process of self-determination of the Jewish people nowadays and the renewal of Jewish identity are intelligently represented here.
EN
Tuwim’s approach to the “Jewish question” has already been analyzed by Polish and foreign scholars. The article is intended to consider some “survival strategies” of the Polish poet from a slightly different angle. In Poland, in the period between the wars Jewish writers were persuaded to accept total polonization and a rejection of their ethnic identity; yet, at the same time they often suffered a rejection from the circles of Polish artists. Any attempt of highlighting their Jewish identity or even a slight interest in Jewish culture incited brutal Jew-bashings. Tuwim considered his being a Polish Jew not only as a fact to be proud of, but also as an opportunity for engaging with self-criticism. He painfully felt the Jewish question as “a powerful wedge cleaving [his own] worldview”. However, like many other Polish- Jewish writers he masked its enduring presence in his own psyche, constructing his public persona through a process of self-fashioning. This paper tries to follow the traces of this “wedge” in Tuwim’s works: from poems supposedly having nothing to do with the “Jewish question”, to encrypted allusions to the great Yiddish writers, from his relentless questioning of all forms of intolerance and nationalist rhetoric, to his conviction that a new poetic language could “reform the world” and become a homeland for all readers regardless of their nationality.
EN
This article aims to sketch out the Jewish-Polish identity of a prominent Jewish actor and director, Zygmunt Turkow (1896–1970). A summary of the nature of Jewish identity is followed by a study of his memoirs Fragmentn fun mayn lebn [Fragments of My Life] (1951) from the period of 1896–1916. Drawing on Cultural Literacy (Segal 2014), the study focuses on the methods and thoughts of Roland Barthes ([1967] 1985) on urban space. The main section of this paper includes an overview of the places and institutions in Warsaw that Turkow mentioned in his memoirs. All the addresses are ascribed to four social categories (home and friends, religion, education, and freetime) and then discussed. The final section contains research conclusions on Turkow’s selfhood, his sense of Jewish and Polish identity, and his attachment to Jewish or Polish culture, as well as the defining characteristics of his Polish-Jewish/ Jewish-Polish self-identity. This article aims to explain the peculiar circumstances that contribute to the complexity of determining and investigating what can be considered as Jewish identity.
EN
In my paper I tackle the issue of the cultural self-image of the East European Jew. I provide a critical analysis of a number of texts, of different kinds and bents – confessional, literary, historical, political – to demonstrate the paradoxes and contradictions of Jewish identity. Noticing the bi-polar paths of Jewish self-interpretation (as exemplified, for instance, by Heschel and Szahak), neither free from the subjective and emotional trends, I argue for the truth closer to those views which acknowledge the religious specificity of the Jewish nation as the chosen people. Regardless of multiple contexts worth considering and at work, the essence of Jewishness dwells in the religious feeling.
Werkwinkel
|
2014
|
vol. 9
|
issue 2
31-58
EN
Reading Olga Kirsch’s Afrikaans poetry, one is struck by the important role that the experience of loss occupies in her oeuvre. It is evident in the first two volumes of poetry she published while still living in South Africa, as well as in the five volumes she published after emigrating to Israel in 1948. Because her poetry, especially the volumes written in Israel, exudes an air of melancholy, this article uses Freud’s writings on loss, mourning and melancholia, as well as the historical tradition preceding his work, as a guideline in exploring the way in which the experience of loss, mourning and melancholy is portrayed in Kirsch’s oeuvre. The article focusses on the way in which loss is portrayed in her poetry: her sense that the Jewish experience of loss over the centuries forms part of her history and identity, the way in which she experiences the loss of South Africa and the language Afrikaans in which she is best able to express herself poetically when she emigrates to Israel, the way in which the loss of her father and mother at different times in her life affected her, her feeling that her experience of loss and the ensuing melancholy are carried over to her children.
EN
Tuwim’s approach to the “Jewish question” has already been analyzed by Polish and foreign scholars. The article is intended to consider some “survival strategies” of the Polish poet from a slightly different angle. In Poland, in the period between the wars Jewish writers were persuaded to accept total polonization and a rejection of their ethnic identity; yet, at the same time they often suffered a rejection from the circles of Polish artists. Any attempt of highlighting their Jewish identity or even a slight interest in Jewish culture incited brutal Jew-bashings. Tuwim considered his being a Polish Jew not only as a fact to be proud of, but also as an opportunity for engaging with self-criticism. He painfully felt the Jewish question as “a powerful wedge cleaving [his own] worldview”. However, like many other Polish-Jewish writers he masked its enduring presence in his own psyche, constructing his public persona through a process of self-fashioning. This paper tries to follow the traces of this “wedge” in Tuwim’s works: from poems supposedly having nothing to do with the “Jewish question”, to encrypted allusions to the great Yiddish writers, from his relentless questioning of all forms of intolerance and nationalist rhetoric, to his conviction that a new poetic language could “reform the world” and become a homeland for all readers regardless of their nationality.
EN
The text analyses the thematization of a key phenomenon of 20th century history and the axis of post-war Jewish identity − the Holocaust/Shoah in the Czech lands with overlaps to Central Europe. In contrast to propositions of the well-known political scientist Pavel Barša (the Holocaust became the cornerstone of Jewish identity only at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, when the State of Israel argued for it within its policy in regards to the occupied Arab territories and the moral category of innocent victim became crucial for Western mind-set), it tries to prove that the Holocaust, for which the Hebrew term Shoah is used in this case, became the pillar of Jewish identity already after the end of World War II. It was also at that time that the growing communist propaganda, which completely dominated the public space after the February coup (1948), began to use it for its own interests. In parallel, the treatise denies that the thematization of the Shoah/Holocaust was dominated by Jews as victims; in the post-war decades both minority Jewish and majority Czech representations worked with two categories: victims of racism and fighters against fascism, even though the communist representation (including the Jewish communists) from the beginning marginalized the Jewish resistance on the Western fronts and also the theme of the uniqueness of the Holocaust phenomenon.
EN
The paper deals with biographical, ideological and artistic links between Julian Tuwim, Alfred Döblin and Kurt Tucholsky. On the one hand, the basis of comparison are biographical similarities, the Jewish origin of those three writers, their family dramas, the experience of politically opressive school, the trauma of revolution or war, and the exile to name just a few. On the other hand, the article demonstrates the ways the modernity has influenced the attitudes and texts of Döblin, Tucholsky and Tuwim. While talking about modernity, the author focuses on such phenomena as secularisation and urbanisation processes, mass political movements, and new cultural challenges.Tuwim, Döblin and Tucholsky were born into assimilated Jewish families. Their perspective on the stereotypical Jews (the orthodox Jews as well as Jewish bankers or manufacturers) is marked with antipathy, or even contempt. The writers’ ambivalence towards the diapora and towards their own origin illustrate “Jewish self-hatred”; however, all three authors change their opinion on Jewry in the face of the growing anti-Semitic and Nazi danger, and especially the Holocaust. Döblin is proud of being Jewish after his visit to Poland in 1924, Tucholsky warns German Jews against the consequences of their passivitivy, and Tuwim publishes in 1944 his agitating manifesto We, Polish Jews. Last but not least, the three authors go into exile because of their Jewish ancestry and sociocultural activities. Therefore, it is no coincidence thatone cannot help having associations with Heinrich Heine: his biography can be interpreted as a prefiguration of a Jewish artist’s biography.Furthermore, Tuwim, Döblin and Tucholsky are notably sensitive to social questions, and their sensitivity to such issues results to some extent from their difficult childhood and youth. Especially significant seem in that respect family conflicts and the moving from city to city, since such experiences increase the feeling of loneliness and the vulnerability to depression. Nevertheless, Döblin, Tucholsky and Tuwim come with impetus into the cultural life of Germany and Poland and work in the areas of literature, cabaret (satire) as well as journalism. They share sympathy for the political left and fears of the orthodox communism. They are simultaneously advocates and ardent critics of great cities. They pay attention to new phenomena (the popularity of cars, the role of the press, the new morality) and react to them. Their aim is creating a culture which appeals to the masses and educates them in a non-intrusive way. However, the awareness of their own intellectual superiority imposes distance towards lower social groups. The distance stems, firstly, from the universal ambivalence artists feel towards the masses, and secondly, from the ideological moderation characteristic of petit bourgoisie and of the political centre. In general, Döblin, Tucholsky and Tuwim are idealists who hope for a humanitarian world which is impossible in the era of extrem political violence leading to the Holocaust.
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